YouVersion for Russian Readers and Speakers All Over the World

Through the Bible App™ and YouVersion.com, for the first time, the YouVersion community now has the potential to reach literally tens of millions of native Russian speakers and readers—no matter where they live. Partnerships with generous publishers of Bibles in Russian have made it possible for us to steadily add popular, easy-to-understand versions like Slovo Zhizny (RSZ) and Синодальный перевод (RURSV).

Of course, Bibles are only one part of the YouVersion experience. Our incredible community of volunteers also mobilized to bring Russian speakers everything YouVersion has to offer, entirely in their native language, including menus, email exchanges, conversations on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, reading plans—even technical support!

Russians in Russia. Russians represent a massive new community for YouVersion. According to The World Factbook, Russia (also known as the Russian Federation) is the ninth most populous nation in the world, with almost 139 million people. Wikipedia says that although more than 100 languages are estimated to be spoken across Russia, 99% of its people understand Russian and share it as their common language.

Russians around the world. Russians living in Russia are only the beginning of this story. Russian speakers live literally everywhere in the world. According to Wikipedia, the largest concentrations of Russians living outside the country are in former Soviet States such as Ukraine (8 million) and Kazakhstan (3.8 million). But many also live in the European Union, and significant numbers have even emigrated to Canada, Australia, and the United States. As air travel and a globally connected economy have made our planet smaller, Russians have truly become citizens of the world.

We’re thrilled to welcome our Russian speaking brothers and sisters into our ever-growing global YouVersion community. And we’re excited that together we can now reach more people than ever before with the life-changing story of God’s love.